Evoke
by Parallaxm
Summary: AU. A violin, a piano, and two musicians out to discover the world and themselves. ON HIATUS.
1. Consonance

Gokudera and Haru are presently 20 years old in this story.

This story is mine; but with you I share its sentiments.

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><p><strong>Evoke <strong>- _"To elicit or draw forth; to produce, through artistry, a vivid impression of reality."_

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><p><strong>I .<strong> Consonance: _harmony in sound_

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Her Mozart piece disgraced the ear with the sound of ink-stamped notes; nothing more, nothing less. Triplets faded into one another with the musicality of plastic—stiff and dull, fitted with a cookie-cutter.

On the score, "bright and cheerful" was etched in with pencil, encircled numerous times. Instead, her tone radiated an austere, forced contentedness; uncomfortable as one who had taken in too much for dinner and settled with a bloated stomach.

Perhaps she _was_ bloated; overfed with a gloom that contrasted the perfect weather outside.

"_You've got to want it, own it—feel it and convey it unlike anyone else. If you're set on studying abroad, you need to take this competition seriously. Do you have an incentive? Why do you play?" _

She sighed, letting the instrument fall from beneath her chin, muttering, "I just can't get in the mood for a spring fugue." With a bow in her hand, she removed the sheet music of her preferred piece from the folder, and propped it up against the stand.

"_You're depressing me with Chopin's nocturne, Haru. Your name embodies the meaning of 'spring'. Play some lighthearted Mozart for a change." _

Eyes closed, she raised her arm; poised.

An explosive smattering of notes broke her focus; shattering it like a pane of glass. The disturbance hurtled out into the hall with the force of a ten foot tall rolling wave. She breathed in shakily, an intoxicating numbness surging through her. Her eyes snapped open in recognition. _Chopin's etude number 12, Opus 25._

The score drifted to the ground in the wake of her sprint as she dashed out of the practice room, all forgotten.

.

The brunette had located the source of the undulating waves of arpeggios. A shaft of sunlight beamed into the long and skinny rectangular window on what would otherwise be a slab of wood referred to as a door.

She inhaled deeply, her brows creasing and sinking downwards toward each other as she strung out an improvised accompaniment. Her sound was polished and yet inexpressibly raw, spiking from a rich alto voice to the highest octave in a matter of seconds.

The pianist on the other side did not stop at her intrusive addition; if anything, his tone grew bolder, rising and swelling to complement her own train of arbitrary melody, rambling along the tracks of a lost destination. With every base note struck on the ivory keys, she spun varying chords of triplets in the same key, two octaves above.

As if they were both holding their breaths, the rapid succession of one arpeggio linking into another ran persistently, and beyond the warm color seeping into her eyelids, she witnessed the tempest whirling into a deep mass of indigo fury, blasting the frothing waves, slapping them onto the faces of eroding rocks.

The aggressive onslaught gentled as the evocative low melody chimed a softer, higher tone.

_A place where the glinting diamonds of seawater laps at the infinite sands of time. . ._

_. . . Where the blue horizon fuses with blue waters, reflecting a high heaven of relentless chaos and capricious essence._

She cringed when she missed an accidental in the key signature, but plowed forward, pausing in-between to allow the piano part to pervade the flow of the piece. Her playing was far from perfect; but this—this catharsis streaming out of her every pore into a woven harmony with a stranger—this was pure. The bow jerked spasmodically as she played, skipping and slicing across the strings as her fingers madly flew between the notes, each contact point between the fine hairs of the bow and the taut cord both caressing and forceful.

The soprano timbre of the violin carried into the distance, crying out as a lark may sing from its freed cage.

His sound boasted the dexterity of agile speed and expression; dragging her pulse in and out of the etude with every buildup and release of tension.

_Yes, _she thought. _I know why I play. _

.

An eternity and three minutes later, she slid down against the deteriorating brick walls, utterly spent. The back of her cardigan resisted the rough texture of stone, and sweat clung to her forehead in a string of ornamental beads. The blooming redness in the fingers of her left hand throbbed with indentations of where the strings dug into her soft skin.

The door of the practice room creaked ajar ominously, exiting the pianist bathed in eerie sunglow.

The intensity of his expression seared a lingering mark in her memory. His gazed locked on hers, the sea green complexity churning with turbulence. The magnetic depths of her dark-chocolate orbs flickered in the light. Their transfixion was somewhat surreal.

It had passed so quickly she was uncertain it even occurred.

His silver locks swayed as he strode past her, not a word spoken between them.

Panting with exertion, she stared after his retreating figure, wondering what had just happened. Wondering if she'd ever be so overcome with whatever she had just experienced ever again.

.

.

x

**A/N: **To get a better idea of the piece that, by chance, drew Gokudera and Haru to the same spot, search "Chopin etude 12 opus 25, Ocean" on YouTube. Now imagine that riveting piano etude paired with some harmonizing violin.

Feel free to answer: _Do you appreciate classical music, or is it just an antiquity to you? Do you connect more with contemporary styles? _


	2. Counterpoint

**II .** Counterpoint: _the art of combining melodies_

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She hadn't told anyone.

It was a secret—_her _secret, even if she wasn't sure if the obscure event was supposed to hold any meaning or simply be written off as a dream. The_ 'oof'_ elicited from a solid object she rebounded off of was _very _much real, however.

"_Watch where you're going, girl." _

Absently, she murmured, "Sorry."

"_Idiot," _the man muttered, and she flinched, awakened by a sharp stab of irritation.

The brunette made her way down the bustle of evening street traffic, nodding '_hi's _and _'Yes, I'll tell my parents you said hello'_s as she passed elderly neighbors. Loosening her scarf from its near-choking death grip, she procured a gleaming house key and fit the jagged edge into the lock.

She visited home every once in a while, making sure to take care of her father, and in turn remind him to care for the family cat, who had grown so hungry that Haru's fish tank gradually became a barren graveyard. Humming a tune as she slipped off her peacoat and unwound her scarf, she unzipped her boots and took a deep breath.

The scent of home quelled the butterflies in her stomach, just for a while.

It wasn't that she didn't care for competitions; they were a great deal of fun and pressure. There were some who won for money, some who won for glory, and few who won for contentedness. Their music was subject to judgment. It was a game of impression. Admittedly, the experience did serve to expand the comfort zones of performers. Ironically enough, many students were told to "try and forget the audience".

"Anybody home?" Her voice echoed into the empty silence. "Oto-san?"

Almost guiltily, a sigh of relief left her lips. Her father wasn't home. Perhaps he was out with friends.

Or working overtime. Again.

He had a permanently lonely smile, the kind that crinkled at the eyes but cried in the heart. Seeing him would remind her of her isolation. The atmosphere would be livelier with their talk, but somehow all the more pathetic, like they were trying to deceive the blue mood into being something bright and cheery.

Her fingers met the smooth surface of the note he'd left on the kitchen counter.

"Haru," she began reading aloud. It was strange saying her own name. She recognized it when others called her, but felt foreign naming herself. "There was an emergency at the clinic today, so I won't be able to join you for dinner. There's something for you in the fridge." She glanced at the bulky metal contraption where she used tip-toe up to reach the top shelf where the Kudzu powder sat, waiting to be dissolved in hot water. Her father despised tea, but her mother had drunk it every day, claiming that it tasted better when the powder was refrigerated.

Turning away from the memory, she finished the note. "Love, Dad."

In spite of everything, she smiled when she opened the refrigerator. _Cake. _

_._

"_Damn it." _

The taxi-driver flushed with embarrassment. "I'm—I'm sorry, sir. If you'd like, I can drop you off at the nearest hotel, which is only five minutes from here."

_I should've taken Dino up on his offer to give me a ride. At least I wouldn't have wasted a bunch of crappy bills on getting lost in the middle of nowhere. _And apparently, the smudged address on the crumpled piece of paper didn't exist. _According to Shamal, the competitors are to reside in one hotel. Did he give me the wrong address? _

"100-4198—is this address nonexistent?"

The driver blanched. "Four _one _nine eight? I thought it said four _seven _nine eight."

A stone lodged itself into the bottom of the pianist's gut. _You're kidding me. You've got to be kidding me. _"No, sir," he bit out, "It's four _one _nine eight. I'm positive."

In lieu of a response, the man stepped on the gas and jolted the passenger abruptly into the strangling restraint of his seatbelt.

Maybe it just wasn't his day.

.

Collapsing onto the hotel bed, he let out a groan of frustration. His hands were sore from carrying his luggage. He flexed his fingers painfully, hoping that by some twist in logic, the ache in his fingers would diminish if he made them ache more by working them.

A rapid series of knocks on the door followed.

With sluggish movement, he trudged over to the entrance, yanking the door open.

"I'm sorry I'm late, Bian—" The young woman clamped her mouth shut, a simultaneously dumbfounded and sheepish expression winding its way onto her face. The butterflies burst out of their cocoons and raged havoc in her stomach. The brunette gazed limply at the man before her, at a loss for coherence.

She met his glare unflinchingly, a fist tightening in her gut.

He'd appeared otherworldly when she had caught a glimpse of him exiting the piano room. Granted, from her vantage point on the ground, any towering man in the sun's spotlight would have had the same effect. Still, even in his bedraggled appearance, he was clearly no commoner. (At least, not in Japan. She didn't know any man who would dye his hair silvery-white. It had to be a foreigner thing.)

_Hi, I think we bonded over Chopin yesterday, but we've never met. Remember me? _

Yeah, right.

"Um... You're—you're not Bianchi-san..." She mentally kicked herself. _Nice. Very eloquent._

He glanced at her sharply, as if examining a convicted criminal. "No, I'm not," he replied with an acerbic edge. "Who the hell are you?"

His disparaging tone was met by a flicker of vexation in her eyes. "Nevermind. Do you happen to know where Bianchi-san may be? I was told to meet her here for a rehearsal."

He dismissed her worry with a shrug, tactfully easing the door closer to himself. "I was given this room on a short notice; they were running out, so they placed me in a staff room that hadn't been occupied yet."

"Oh, I see. Anyway—"

"Can't help you. Sorry."

The door swung shut.

The gust of the slam's momentum hit her squarely in the face, and she blinked. "Well isn't he pleasant," she muttered under her breath, dazedly making her way down to her own room.

Gokudera lay awake, staring at the ceiling. He'd seen those unnerving eyes before, somewhere.

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x


End file.
